In recent years, the lid has been lifted on low fat and fat free yogurts that often contain lots of sugar. Arla aimed to transform the world of yogurt, by creating a product that’s naturally low in sugar and nutritious with high protein, no fat and 50% more milk. Arla wanted to become a ‘champion of dairy’, so it needed to do more than sell yogurt, it needed to be revolutionary.

One of its biggest challenges was the huge competition. The yogurt aisle is crowded and most of the products aim to influence the consumer at shelf, with around 80% of purchases being influenced in store at the last six feet to purchase. And it needed to transform the perception that Greek or Greek-style yogurts are the healthiest options. Arla wouldn’t have long to challenge these assumptions – just six feet – so they needed a ground-breaking design and turned to agency Elmwood.

Far from wanting to blend in with the others on the shelf, Arla needed a unique approach. Aiming at the health conscious over 55s and busy young professionals, there was an opportunity to empower and inform its consumers.

As a new product, it’s not easy to dig out heritage, so Arla drew on its Scandinavian roots, hence the name skyr. It provided the perfect foundations for simple packaging, which helped convey its natural ingredients and stand out from the complex products in its competition, think Onken, Yeo Valley, Daneo.

The designers worked with this to create a striking design that’s also calming – a balance that’s not easy to strike. The idea of the iceberg draws on the Nordic landscape and evokes the feeling of something pure on top with something refreshing, delicious and full of energy underneath. It definitely provides a welcome contrast to a dollop of yogurt with fruit on a spoon.

In a market filled with fierce competition, Arla has grown to be the 12th largest supplier of yogurt in the UK and skyr has proved so popular production is struggling to keep up with demand. Gaining listings in the UK’s big four supermarkets and beyond, it has engaged consumers and ensured cut through at the point of sale, with 70% of skyr sales adding incremental value to the yogurt category.

Arla skyr became a £12.2 million brand in 13 months, and is predicted to become a £21 million brand in just 20 months. By appealing to a broader target audience than anticipated, its 3% penetration target was smashed, reaching 8.3% a year after launch. The stand out appeal created by the design at the crucial shelf fixture was key to turning recognition into purchase, with aided awareness for skyr being extremely strong at 45%.

The great news for Arla farmers is that they will see more of their milk being utilised in a product that has proved to actually add value to its category, creating opportunities for their own growth.

The lost art of listening

Listening is a difficult ability to nurture, requiring a far higher level of focused attention.

But deep listening has many benefits including:

• Effective communication
• Presence, connection, empathy and intimacy
• Decreases conflict
• Improves collaboration, productivity and creativity
• Increased sense of well-being

Few people are formally trained to listen: psychologists, coaches and mediators among others. But outside these professional categories how many are really able to actively listen? Think now: how many people do you consider amazing listeners? I can count very few.

And yet, skilled active listeners are people we like to work and be with. They make us feel respected, acknowledged and understood. They often provide us with valuable feedback. They are calmer and more in control of their emotions and responses. With them we experience a sense of expansiveness, personal connection and presence. They are the partners, friends, colleagues and leaders we all look for, yet – I’m sure you’ll agree – are the hardest to find.

But we shouldn’t beat ourselves up. It’s not our fault we’re lousy listeners. It’s all about the monkey and the gap.

The monkey and the gap

4,000 years ago a brilliant man – the Buddha – coined the expression, ‘The monkey mind’, to describe the hyperactive minds of humans. Like the tree-dwelling mammal, our minds jump from one branch to the next, from one topic to another.

According to Buddha’s teaching this is the default mode of a mind that struggles to stay present, focused and unbiased to what appears in the moment.

He would have never imagined (or perhaps he did) the rate at which technology would exponentially exacerbate the monkey mind. We are here and elsewhere at the same time, tweeting, texting, jumping from one conversation to the next, faster and faster.

Instead of taming the monkey we feed it with its own poison: an accelerated cacophony of input and interactions. There is a shared sense of urgency in all dimensions of our hectic lives, both personally and professionally.

And there’s another reason why we wander so easily: the way the brain functions.

We talk at a rate of about 125–175 words per minute, while we think (listen) at the rate of up to 450 words per minute. This substantial gap between speaking speed and thought speed represents a 75% time differential in which the monkey mind can wander, entertaining itself with additional words and thoughts. This goes some way towards explaining why we retain, remember and understand so little of what we hear – only one quarter according to research. Counterbalancing the forces of mind wandering and bringing awareness to the challenging task of listening takes effort, yet could be easier than you think.

The time to reconnect with ourselves and others is now.

Minding the gap

Buddha taught that our minds can be tamed and slowed down by meditation. This contemplative practice calms our internal monkey and generates mindfulness.

Mindfulness and deep listening go hand in hand; they are two sides of the same coin.

Luckily, we needn’t formally meditate to boost mindfulness. There’s no need to sit on a cushion, legs crossed. We just need train ourselves to listen, and, conveniently our daily life offers this opportunity.

I train my clients with a technique called the 3As: Aware, Active and Awaken. You can download my handy guide to mastering the art of listening in three simple steps here. 

By listening, we can learn about and transform our relationship with ourselves – much more than we can through talking.

A powerful shift occurs: we leave behind bias, antagonism, self-centeredness and separation, instead embracing presence, collaboration, solidarity, and intimacy with ourselves – and with others. And crucially – for both our personal and professional lives – we allow ourselves to be positively changed by them.

Read the full unabridged version of Roberta’s article at her website.

What this stems from is a confusion between Art Direction and Design – while similar they actually require very different skill sets, and more importantly they actually achieve very different objectives. Whereas an Art Director sets out to translate desired moods and turn concepts into imagery, a Designer sets out to create tangible or intangible objects, products and experiences. It has always been difficult to differentiate between the two, it is especially so at Cannes when the Design Lions encompass everything from UX design and activation to more ‘traditional’ design like logos and packaging. In Cannes everything is viewed through advertising tinted glasses, from the judging to the content programme.

The developing scenario is a threat to our long-term design authority. More and more brands and clients are attending Cannes and when they see ad agencies winning design awards, they think to themselves that maybe ad agencies can do our job, which is not the case. Brand-design agencies are specialists. We are trained in the art of creating the visual presentation of a brand. We think about the overall brand point of view and create long-term meaning, memory structures and visual equity. This is simply not what ad agencies do. By definition, and for very good reasons, they are focused on communicating their next campaign, the current proposition, or the new positioning.

Another issue is the criteria for what works. When the judges in Cannes discuss the effectiveness of entries, it often comes down to the amount of social success it has seen. Did it go viral? How many millions of impressions did it gain? What about the increase in sales? What about the return on investment? These are the statistics that I would be more interested in as a marketer. At the end of the campaign, how many more widgets did you actually sell? Or if you like – did it actually change a single person’s attitude towards the brand? Did it affect their behaviour? My entire session at Cannes was about the fantasy of decision-making and how brands that have been designed with meaning can actually change people’s behaviours in a way that no other medium, including advertising, can.

I don’t want to downplay the importance of advertising or social media success; both important aspects of any brand’s marketing mix. What I am saying is that without a solid brand identity and design to match, how will the ads have a lasting impact on your bottom line? Take Fearless Girl, the stand out winner at Cannes, which took home 18 Lions, including four Grand-Prix awards. There is no denying that it was a brilliant piece of work, but the question that remains is do those outside of the industry even know who the piece was commissioned for? SHE is not a fearless girl at all, SHE is a Wall Street asset management company’s CSR policy program.

Yes, it’s becoming harder and harder to define exactly what constitutes brand-design, but when a brilliant piece of design work comes along, we all take notice. Now we just need to make sure that the design agencies out there doing that work aren’t afraid to take on the ad agencies and prove to them that design really can make a difference.

Rather than creatives operating independently of each other, with the right management solution, you can bring creative agencies together resulting in a collegiate response with greater transparency, cooperation and return on investment. The process I apply is led by the needs of each client, but the underlying principles are the same: to spread best practice, improve efficiencies and raise the profile and quality of creativity across the organisation.

It was while advising Land Securities, the name behind some of the most ambitious developments in London, that I instigated a roster of design consultancies and copywriters, and remained involved in its management and evaluation. I am a firm believer that roster creation is only the first step. While it’s vital to get the best mix of talents on board, it’s just as important to put in place the right processes to manage relationships and motivate people to produce ever higher standards of work. After assembling the group of creative specialists, we met regularly to share work in progress and be briefed on Land Securities marketing plans, strategy and brand vision. The result was greater knowledge-sharing, improved efficiencies and a real sense of collective endeavour.

Land Securities’ creative output was widely reported as having turned property marketing convention on its head and proved equally effective from a sales perspective. In two years, Land Securities won more creative awards than any other company and was voted one of the “Hot 50 people making a difference in design” two years running in a Design Week poll, as well as being named Design Week’s “Client of the Year”.

The British Heart Foundation (BHF), the UK’s number one heart charity, has enjoyed similar success with this roster methodology. Key to success was the introduction of an agreed design-agency management process and the creation of a structure whereby roster agencies could meet on a regular basis – an invaluable way to share skills and experience, and raise creative standards across the board. In organisations where project managers might not have a design background, such as at BHF, I’ve found that the development and delivery of a ‘Commissioning Design’ workshop has helped educate, whilst also providing a template to support ongoing creative commissioning. This process has made a lasting difference to the way BHF works.

“The design roster helped BHF fully realise their creative potential and work in a more efficient and effective way”, said Louise Kyme then Head of Design at BHF. As with Land Securities, BHF were similarly voted one of the “Hot 50 people making a difference in design” in a Design Week poll and Design Week Benchmark’s “Client of the Year” in 2012, really highlighting the value and impact a cohesive and structured method of working with multiple agencies can bring to all types of business.

My consistent experience is that well managed interaction between agencies nurtures healthy competition and the sharing of a company’s marketing strategy means everyone gets an appreciation of the bigger brand vision. Managed well, a roster can deliver value for money, creative excellence and raise the profile of design and a sense of pride within any institution.

Like any large organisation, BSkyB faced challenges when it came to coordinating creative work, sharing knowledge and maximising resources. They took the step to introduce a year-long creative programme for their online design team as well as their established external agencies. Charlotte Briscall, then BSkyB’s Head of Design, Internet Products and Services, said that as a result, the business benefited from “a leaner and more coherent roster” and “the quality of the design work increased threefold”. What’s more, the creative programme generated a real buzz throughout the organisation, which led to a number of BSkyB’s internal marketing and strategic leaders asking to take part. The value of a collective sense of pride amongst everyone involved in a roster shouldn’t be underestimated; from engagement to productivity it can bring much to a business.

Visionary clients with a real commitment to creativity can deliver truly exciting and lasting results through their roster.

As my client Christine Ayre, Head of Corporate Design at King’s College London said of the value of having a smoothly-functioning, collaborative design roster, is that it “consistently delivers great creative results – raising the profile of good design and raising the creative bar”. And that’s a recipe for success.

You cannot do ‘growth’ on creativity alone

Too many agencies focus on the quality of their work and creating a great working environment, but the reality is that your agency will never grow without an equal commitment to the commerciality of the business.

Nick Howe of Uniform summed this up nicely when he said, “In order to grow you need to nurture all three areas of the business in EQUAL measure:

• Creativity
• Culture and
• Commerciality”

Organic growth happens by accident – and it can easily be reversed by events outside your control. To achieve sustainable growth it needs to be decided on as a defined aim of the business. And once you make the decision to grow, you need a very clear plan.

(Read more about the Uniform growth story here.)

The plan

Your plan has to be flexible – to deal with issues like clients putting projects on hold, or key staff getting ill – so it needs to be constantly updated.

Trevor Cairns, CEO of LOVE, joined the agency four years ago after heading the UK business of Nike (a client of the agency). He has brought with him structure, commerciality – and most importantly, a plan.

Says Trevor, “I re-launch the plan every six months. I have an in-depth version for the Board, a version for the senior management team, and a top-level one for the whole team. It means that everyone knows the direction of travel, and it puts context around all our decisions so that all staff can understand why we are doing specific things.”

In 2012 Uniform decided to make a concerted effort to grow. They had the right mix of people at the top – the three founders plus two others on the Board – to cover the “3 C’s”, and put together a clear plan on how they would achieve their goals.

Radically, they decided to cut their client list in half, but at the same time widening their scope of work so they were able to deliver more work for the clients they kept. They re-introduced R&D to the business and invested heavily in developing their culture and processes. They built new services and worked hard to find the best talent to deliver the services.

They raised £1/2m in grant money and bank funding (which the directors personally guaranteed), and invested a further £1/2m of profits back into the business over the following three years.

Both Love and Uniform have similar basic plans for the years ahead – which Trevor at LOVE summarised as “20:20:20”. Aiming for 20% annual growth, a 20% profit margin and having no client contributing more than 20% of their business. But as Trevor emphasised, “Our plan is a guide, not a rule. Don’t risk your culture by doing soul destroying work just to get from 18% to 20%.”

Make decisions based on your plan, and act quickly.

Having a business plan makes the hard decisions easier to make. The plan is the filter through which all decisions are put through:

• Do we hire this person?
• Do we chase this type of work?
• Do we let this person go?

These decisions are all made easier by asking if they fit with the plan.

Letting people go is never easy, but having a plan makes it clear earlier when people are not right, or if the business cannot sustain someone in that position. One wrong person can have a negative effect on the whole business.

It also justifies difficult decisions with clients. “Don’t be afraid to sack a client,” says Nick “they have to be profitable.” Another DBA member, Exesios headed by Paul Brammer, admitted that once they got their systems sorted out they discovered that their largest client, who was taking up 50% of their time, was only contributing a tiny fraction of their profit. Losing the client suddenly freed up so much time for other, more profitable, clients.

Proactive recruitment

The biggest single thing that both LOVE and Uniform did when they started on their route to growth was to change their recruitment model. In the past they had tried to win work, then find the extra staff quickly in order to fulfill that work. The speed at which you have to recruit means that you often recruit the wrong person – you are just trying to “get the bodies in.” Changing to a proactive model is key.

Brian Mansfield, Chairman of Taxi Studios in Bristol, backs this up. His rather succinct mantra is “hire slow, fire fast.” Constantly looking for good people, and hiring them when you find them, protects your culture because you are not panic-hiring. But if you get it wrong, you have to act quickly.

While Nick Howe acknowledges that many might see proactive recruitment as a gamble, he preferred to think of it as “investing in people.” LOVE hasn’t had a problem finding work for their new people. Trevor explains, “Saying you have a creative director specialising in packaging, or experiential, makes winning work a lot easier than trying to convince a client that you can skill up and hire a team if they give you the work.”

Develop your staff

In addition to recruiting good staff, a key way to maintain your culture is to develop existing staff and grow them as the company grows. Uniform identified that on their planned growth journey they would quickly reach a time where they would need a middle management team to manage the day to day running of the business. They identified six staff in the business who they felt had what it takes, did a skills analysis, and produced a management team development programme to skill them up. The programme consisted of internal mentoring, external training courses from the DBA and D&AD and in-house training with consultants running bespoke courses, again organised by the DBA.

“Plans have to be flexible,” said Nick “two of the six didn’t work out – they were less interested in the management side but because we had such an open and honest dialogue this was identified early enough for us to develop career paths for them in the creative areas they loved.”

“Change makes people nervous,” says Trevor, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Love have managed to maintain a recruitment rate of one person a month, to allow the last person to get settled before the next new person arrives.

Uniform’s growth has changed the balance of their agency somewhat, with a much stronger focus on new business (from one to four people) to bring in the amount of work needed, and client servicing (from two to nine people) to build relationships with existing clients – all part of the plan to do more work for their existing clients.

Practise what you preach

It is very easy to fall into the trap described as “the plumber with the leaky tap” where everyone in the agency concentrates on producing great work for the clients, but no one thinks about their own brand. Nick Farrar, MD and owner of Shaped By says, “You have to look after the day-to-day stuff – the infrastructure to make your agency run smoothly” and, “look after your own brand and marketing.” The inference is clear – how can you advise clients if you don’t practise what you preach? Look after your own brand. There is nothing wrong with commissioning another agency to do your website if you don’t have the best digital skills in-house. And don’t be too proud to ask for advice – whether that be from accountants, friends in other businesses or mentors.

Be true to yourself and enjoy

And finally, Merle Hall of Kinneir Dufort, says you have to be true to your values and enjoy what you are doing. She quotes Jim Collins’ Hedgehog concept principle #1 “ Do what you are most passionate about.” After all, if you are not enjoying it you can’t do it brilliantly. This authenticity at the heart of your business will allow you to “do great stuff” – which allows the growth to happen.

Recommended reading

The following have been suggested by members for those looking to make a step change in their business:

“Win without pitching” by Blair Enns

“Small Giants” by Bo Burlingham

“Good to great” by Jim Collins

“Building design strategy” ­by Thomas Lockwood

“How to run a successful design business” by Shan Preddy

You can find more examples of agency growth in these case studies:

Nalla

PATH

Uniform

Designers, jones knowles ritchie, were asked to create the bold and brave design that would get Hippeas noticed. The brand positioning and design idea were both inspired by the brand’s unique name and its immediate phonetic reference to the hippie movement. The design language needed to avoid clichés, yet speak directly to a modern generation of ‘hippies’ – those in search of a healthy lifestyle that has a positive impact on the world and communities.

The design was created around the graphic of a smiling ‘Hippeas face’ to instil positive perception in its buyers at the shelf. A chickpea for the eye is a quirky way of hinting at its main ingredient and each flavour has a different colour for the tongue.

The branding went beyond the design, jones knowles ritchie developed Hippeas’ identity, personality and tone of voice, which tell the story of its socially-conscious ethos. Irreverent humour that builds on the hippie movement appeals to today’s savvy consumer market and words and phrases such as ‘power to the peaple’ and ‘peas and love’ have become part of the brand vocabulary.

Despite an increasingly saturated snack food market, Hippeas managed to break through with an unprecedented product launch. Not one retailer that Hippeas approached refused to list their products.

Having only been trading for six months, they managed to gain listings in 16,000 stores in the UK and the US, with the likes of Whole Foods and Starbucks amongst them.

Beyond the launch, jones knowles ritchie has helped Hippeas to develop its social missions and initiatives. They now partner with Farm Africa on a joint initiative, ‘Food for Good’, where Hippeas supports farmers in Ethiopia to grow themselves out of poverty and build a more prosperous life for their families. They are also embarking on a three-year journey to fund and develop a fair trade, self-sustainable chickpea farming community in Ethiopia. The brand’s commitment to improving the lives of farmers and Ethiopian communities is paramount to its vision.

An aroma for change

Boasting such a rich history and a beautiful story, Buchanan’s still wanted to retain its powerful brand but with a fresher, more contemporary look for its range.

forceMAJEURE got under the skin of the brand to unearth the real story of James Buchanan, a well-regarded philanthropist who established the company. They visited the Dalwhinnie Distillery to discover the archives and bottling facilities and draw more from its history. These insights formed the inspiration and basis for the range’s new brand, bottle and secondary packaging design.

A homage to heritage

Four key elements were focused on to bring out the heritage. First, they took inspiration from the original label, which featured a legal document outlining the contract to supply whisky to the House of Lords. Second, they chose to adopt a canteen-shaped bottle that has long been a symbol for sharing as they mirror the WW1 water canteens. Finally, they wanted to include the James Buchanan seal that represents quality and authenticity, and the colour green, which harks back to the lush green landscape of Scotland.

With these ideas in mind, a new design was created. They used his signature and stamps to act as a seal of approval for every bottle. A new cap mechanism was added that literally breaks the seal to create a ritual experience. An ingenious embossing of the family crest at the back of the bottle can be seen from the front. These all create a premium feel and look, uplifting the brand.

While the new bottles have a contemporary vibe, the clever instillation of Buchanan’s history elevates its heritage and gives the brand extra weight and importance.

Aged for success

Following the redesign, Buchanan’s has been reinvigorated. It has seen a 23% increase in value in Mexico and a 52% growth in value in Colombia in the space of a year. In the US – the largest market for the brand – value growth is up 9%. Overall, brand value has expanded by 20% and an 8% increase in volume in key markets has been seen.

Importantly, brand distinctiveness has increased by 20%. This has helped it to receive more interest and demand from both customers and consumers alike, which has allowed Buchanan’s to enter new markets and has driven further penetration.

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